Environmental Clearance for 218 Coal Mines Under Different Stages of Approval

According to the Press Information Bureau, 218 mines of Coal India Limited (CIL) are operating in violation to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2006. These are pre-1994 mines when the EIA notification was not in place. These mines never applied for clearance and are operating on renewal of lease basis. Ninety one of these mines belong to Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL), 103 to Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), 20 to Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) and 4 mines to Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL).

CIL has now applied for Environmental Clearances (EC) by grouping all of these into clusters. All 91 mines of ECL are grouped into 13 clusters for obtaining EC likewise 103 BCCL mines are grouped into 17 clusters. Proposals for obtaining clearances for clusters have been submitted to MoEF. This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Coal, Shri Pratik Prakashbapu Patil in written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha.